Author Archives: admin

Are Augusta and Richmond County special in transparency?

So why does

Augusta have the second highest high tech job growth in the country?
I can only speculate, but local government transparency could be a factor.
If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,
would you go for a place where you couldn't tell what the local governments
were up to, or one where you could easily find out?
Augusta's combined City Council and County Commission meetings
(it's a consolidated government)

are on video, online.
Their agendas are available in either HTML or PDF,

with attachments.

Here's an example, their



5 December 2012 Commission Meeting.
It includes

a proposed amendment to their land subdivision code.
The actual proposed ordinance

is linked right into the agenda so everybody can see it.

And yes, they link attachments into their agendas before
their meetings;
here's

Augusta's agenda for their meeting tomorrow 18 December 2012,
already with attachments, such as this one

about a zoning exception,
which was apparently submitted on a standard agenda submittal form,
and approved by the Clerk of Commission.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Lowndes County Chairman



complained the Chamber of Commerce hadn't read a proposed
zoning code change
even though

that change is not linked into the agenda (nor is anything else)
and
last year

the same Chairman said no drafts would be published.
Tuesday last week, Lowndes County Commissioners passed changes to the
solid waste ordinance
and to the

alcohol ordinance
that voters and taxpayers and business owners did not get to see
before the Commission voted on them.
Those ordinances seem to be on the county website now that it's
too late to provide input on them: alcohol and waste.
Both ordinances were revised with no public hearings.
And the Chairman even

forgot to hold a scheduled public hearing on special tax lighting districts.
Oh, and they

apparently now have property owners paying on almost $9 million
in bonds for a county palace
that only two years ago they said was already completely paid off
out of sales taxes.

If you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,

Continue reading →

Decatur County already went from private prison to solar park

Decatur County, that’s

turning an industrial park into a solar park;
why is that county familiar?




Because it’s

the other county that thought it was getting a CCA private prison last year!

Decatur County has already moved on from that boondoggle
that would
have prisoners competing with local workers
while

not increasing local employment.
Decatur County is already well along towards a solar park that could bring

“400 hundred thousand a year in tax revenue”.
Has our Industrial Authority got anything in negotiations for a solar park?
How about our Airport Authority?
And what is Georgia Power doing to help?

-jsq

West Point aiming for net zero energy use

U.S. Army is serious about solar, installing solar panels as a
“very visible and a very recognizable part of
our renewable energy initiative that can immediately click with the
general public”
as it makes its military academy net zero, while
encouraging cadets to become renewable energy leaders.
Hm, sounds like

Decatur County with its solar industrial park
and what we could do here with

solar Lowndes High.

Mike Strasser wrote Army PR 29 November 2012,

Solar panels deliver new energy to West Point’s Net Zero initiative,


The installation of solar panels on the roof of the Lichtenberg
Tennis Center—780 panels, to be exact—in recent weeks
represents West Point’s continuing efforts to achieve energy
sustainability.

Since becoming a Net Zero Energy pilot installation last April, West
Point has been making strides toward the ultimate goal of producing
as much energy as it uses by 2020. According to an environmental
assessment for the U.S. Army Environmental Command and West Point
Garrison, the installation currently generates less than .02 percent
of the energy it consumes from renewable sources. Matt Talaber,
Department of Public Works engineer and director, said the solar
panels will be a step in the right direction.

“The solar panels are very visible and a very recognizable part of
our renewable energy initiative that can immediately click with the
general public,” Talaber said. “It’s a positive image that shows
West Point is interested in renewable energy and is working on its
Net Zero energy goals.”

And they’re also improving conservation and efficiency.
Plus this:

Continue reading →

AZ invites CCA to help get more customers in School to Prison Pipepline

We could have slipped down this slippery slope with

that proposed CCA private prison,
down to where Casa Grande Arizona is, inviting CCA’s
guards and dogs into our schools to collect our children as
private prison customers.

Sadhbh Walshe wrote for the Guardian 13 December 2012,

Arizona funnels business to CCA through its school-to-prison pipeline:
Casa Grande invited a private prison firm to help make a high-school marijuana bust. Can you spot the conflict of interest?

Drug sweeps of schools are not uncommon occurrences in the recent


past in America, much to the chagrin of civil rights advocates, who
see such sweeps as an efficient means of diverting certain kids to
prison — in some cases, even before they make it to
adolescence, via the much-criticized

“school-to-prison pipeline”.
What was unusual about this particular raid, however, is that, among
the team of law enforcement personnel and canines put together by
the local Casa Grande police department, there were prison guards
employed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the
country’s largest for-profit prison company, which owns and operates
several prisons in the area. CCA was also kind enough to provide
their sniffer dogs for the raid.

What’s even more unusual about this is that pretty much nobody in a
position of authority in and around Casa Grande seems to think
there’s anything wrong with that.



That’s where “jobs, jobs, jobs” with no consideration of the consequences
leads you.
Some jobs are not worth having.
Private prison jobs are among them.

The state of Georgia spends a billion dollars a year locking people up,
many of them for minor drug offenses, and around 85% of them for
drug-related offenses.
What if instead we spent a fraction of that money on drug counselling
and mental health care, and the rest on public education?
Then we’d have healthier people more prepared for real jobs.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Dante Acevedo.

Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead, and Coal is Crashing



Somebody is willing to read the sunshine writing:

Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead and Coal is Crashing, as
Kathleen Rogers and Danny Kennedy wrote for EcoWatch 14 Dec 2012.

As I wrote

back in April when formerly coal-plotting Cobb EMC went solar:

Coal is dead. Nuclear is going down.
Solar will eat the lunch of utilities that don’t start generating it.

Can Georgia Power and Southern Company (SO) read that handwriting on the wall?


They can’t fight Moore’s Law, which has steadily brought the cost
of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy down for thirty years now, and
shows no signs of stopping.
This is the same Moore’s Law that has put a computer in your pocket
more powerful than a computer
that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1982
and was used by an entire company.

Solar PV costs dropped 50% last year.
Already
all the new U.S. electric capacity installed this September
was solar and wind.
As this trend continues, solar will become so much more cost-effective
than any fossil or nuclear fuel power that nobody will be able to ignore it.

Rogers and Kennedy explained this phenomenon:

The seismic shift in how we all use cell phones and mobile technology to access the internet almost snuck up on the incumbent technologies and the monopolies that made money selling us landline telephones and a crappy service. Now, we’re all using apps on smartphones all of the time. So too, the shift to a scaled, solar-powered future built around the modular technology at the heart of solar power—the photovoltaic solar cell—will come as a surprise to many. We call it the solar ascent, and it is happening every day in a million ways.

Will SO and Georgia Power continue to prop up

that 1973 legal wall


that

inhibits solar financing in Georgia?
Companies and even economic development authorities are

starting to find ways around it,
and of course there’s

Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) trying to

wedge into the law as a utility.
After Hurricane Sandy,

rooftop solar for grid outage independence
has suddenly hit the big time
(Austin Energy caught onto that back in 2003).
The

U.S. military got solar and renewable energy
back in Afghanistan and are now doing it bigtime everywhere.

SO and Georgia Power can try to ignore

Continue reading →

Industrial park from green grass to a green solar future: Decatur County

Our Industrial Authority is

in favor of solar business now;
what if they seeded some of

their industrial parks
with solar panels like Decatur County is doing?
They think it will make them look like a progressive county.
What do we think?

Ty Wilson wrote for WTXL 7 Dec 2012,

A solar park is coming to the Decatur County Industrial Park,



The Decatur County Industrial park will go from having green grass
to having a green future.

A Lenexa, Kansas company is building a solar farm at the Decatur
County Industrial Park.

The Decatur County Industrial park will go from having green grass
to having a green future.

Keith Lyle is the chairman of the Bainbridge Decatur Development
Authority, he says, “We are just extremely excited to have this come
for the community.”


Decatur County Solar Park in solar Megawatt context
And, it’s private investment!


Trade Winds Energy is leasing at least 100 acres to put in solar
panels at ten thousand dollars a year.

Company executives says they will invest 17 million dollars into the
project.

Lyle says, “This will add from the tax aspect a significant revenue
stream. When it is all said and done you are looking at a taxable
amount of 40 million is assets. On the project that is 400 hundred
thousand a year in tax revenue.”

Trade Wind Energy doesn’t list this project yet
(and all the projects they do list are wind projects),


but if we take a rule of thumb

Continue reading →

Rooftop solar for grid outage independence

Solar power can bring for energy independence, not just from foreign countries,
also from the grid during storms and other outages.

Inspired by the need to deal with downed power lines
in New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy,
David Crane and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote for NYTimes 12 Dec 2012,

Solar Panels for Every Home,

Solar photovoltaic technology can significantly reduce our reliance


on fossil fuels and our dependence on the grid.
Electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, on
the roofs of warehouses and big box stores and over parking lots can
be wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails.

Solar panels have dropped in price by 80 percent in the past five
years and can provide electricity at a cost that is at or below the
current retail cost of grid power in 20 states, including many of
the Northeast states. So why isn’t there more of a push for this
clean, affordable, safe and inexhaustible source of electricity?

First, the investor-owned utilities that depend on the existing
system for their profits have little economic interest in promoting
a technology that empowers customers to generate their own power.
Second, state regulatory agencies and local governments impose
burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily
raise installation costs.

I can tell you by experience that solar panels on the roof
(with batteries) can supply power when the grid is out.

In regulatory-captured Georgia, the big impediment to solar is

financing, because of 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act.
When will Southern Company and Georgia Power admit their boondoogle
on the Savannah River has failed and get on with conservation,
efficiency, wind, and solar power?

-jsq

Augusta high tech job growth: second in the country

What is Augusta doing that attracts so many high tech jobs?

Orlando Montoya wrote for GPB News 7 December 2012,

Augusta High Tech Ranks Nationally,


A national group working to promote entrepreneurship says Augusta
has the second highest growth rate of high tech jobs in the past
five years.

Only Boise, Idaho grew tech jobs faster.

San Francisco based Engine Advocacy says between 2006 and 2011,
Augusta increased its technology sector jobs by 81%.

City officials credit the area’s low cost of living.

If that was the only key,
Lowndes County and Valdosta MSA would lead the country….
What else?

Continue reading →

Zero owed in 2010; why $8.9 million owed now on county palace? @ LCC 2012-12-11

If Lowndes County owed $0 (zero dollars) on the county palace in November 2010,
why are we paying on

$8,965,000 in bonds for it in December 2012?
If that palace was “100% Paid by SPLOST” in 2010,
why in 2012 is the county pledging our property tax dollars to pay those bonds?


Zero balance on the county palace?

In November 2010:


$22,380,000


Judicial Building Cost


$6,728,000


Administrative Building Cost


100%

Paid by SPLOST


$0


Balance Owed

So says a double-page flyer about “the Lowndes County Judicial &
Administrative Complex”

Flyer from November 2010
produced by the Valdosta Daily Times for Lowndes
County in 2010 and signed “Highest regards, Joe Pritchard, County Manager”.
There’s no dateline, but it invites the public to a dedication of the Complex
“on Friday, November 12, 2010.”


Preliminary Official Statement Dated November 20, 2012
from Morgan Keegan about the $8,965,000 in Refunding Revenue Bonds
(Lowndes County Judicial/Administration Complex)
Series 2012, which says this:

The Bonds are payable solely from payments to be made by Lowndes County,
Georgia (the “County”) pursuant to an Intergovernmental Contract,
dated as of December 1, 2012 (the “Contract”), between the Issuer
and the County. Under the Contract, the County has agreed to levy and
collect an annual tax on all taxable property located within the County
as may be necessary to produce in each year revenues which are sufficient
to make the payments required by the Contract.

So which is it?

Continue reading →

Videos @ LCC 2012-12-11



Moody and the Chamber won, rural residents got wasted,
and taxpayers still didn't get to see a single thing the Lowndes County Commission
voted on last night in 45 minutes (very long for them)
in front of the biggest audience I've ever seen there.

They

appointed John "Mac" McCall to ZBOA.
They revised the

alcohol ordinance with some unspecified "changes to the fee schedule",
and added another alcohol restriction to the
Lake Park rezoning
before approving it.

They approved the

solid waste ordinance and granted a waste collection monopoly to

a company from New York City
despite all known public input being against it.
Two
more people
spoke
against it
in Citizens Wishing to Be Heard.

Gretchen Quarterman recommended adding
all the appointed Boards and Authorities to the county's calendar.

Commissioners accepted applicant's withdrawal of

the rezoning request near Moody AFB
and tabled indefinitely the related

zoning code amendment.
They
approved rezoning for the
Naylor Dollar General.

Commission approved four Decorative Lighting Special Tax Districts (forgetting it was supposed to be a
public hearing),
and a refund for one that wasn't.

Danny Weeks got approved a new netclock
and new phones for the 911 center,
and he and his staff got an award.
The library railroad continues,
the bonds renegotation was approved with
about $2 million savings and some legal questions,
the Annex has asbestos but they'll deal with it,
and after Friday's demolition ceremony
there will be a going-away reception for Chairman Paulk,
and Bill Slaughter will be the new Chairman.

You missed all that and more at yesterday's Commission meeting.

Here's

a video playlist of the Regular Session,
followed by the agenda with the videos linked into it.

Update 2014-04-09: Fixed embedded video link.


Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 December 2012.

For reference here are the

videos of
yesterday morning's Work Session.
And here is

the agenda with links to the videos and some notes.

Continue reading →